Robert Scoble has apparently given up on email. He makes a good point for clear, open communication in his latest Twitter rant. If nothing else, the following tweets force me to consider the possibility of 1) defaulting to open communications (blog, twitter, forum) or 2) making sure that my private communication is acceptable for public consumption - don't say anything that the world couldn't see (not that the world is really all that interested in what I am doing.)

From Twitter via pidgin:

(13:51:42) twitter@twitter.com: Scobleizer: It's amazing that in this age of Twitter that people still send email. I hate email. I hate direct Tweets. I hate Facebook messages.
(13:52:58) twitter@twitter.com: Scobleizer: PR people are the worst in the email regard. Speaker planners are close. I don't answer a lot of my email anymore. If I did, I'd never do.
(13:55:44) twitter@twitter.com: Scobleizer: arikb: yeah, email still has SOME value. But going down all the time. I far prefer people not send me private notes. Scalable communication.
(13:56:40) twitter@twitter.com: Scobleizer: I always answer things in public space first. Why? Because those communications scale.
(13:57:06) twitter@twitter.com: Scobleizer: If something really needs to be private than email is great. But most of my email doesn't need to be private.
(13:58:30) twitter@twitter.com: Scobleizer: Or people asking me to blog. Very low quality stuff. If PR people were forced to do their work in public their entire method would change.
14:00
(14:00:44) twitter@twitter.com: Scobleizer: If I want to get a hold of Mike Arrington, for instance, i know that writing a Tweet about him will get his attention far faster than email.
(14:04:42) twitter@twitter.com: Scobleizer: Basically this is my gesture to the world: I am not answering my email and I'm not going to start. I'm overloaded. Tweet me.